


Speechless

by HisMightyShield



Category: Marvel 616, Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Anal Sex, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Love, M/M, Marking, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HisMightyShield/pseuds/HisMightyShield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian Gray, since the moment he signed his soul away to keep his youth for eternity and allow his portrait to age instead, has never changed. Nothing could mark him permanently, nothing had ever lasted. Nothing until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speechless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [texmas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/texmas/gifts).



> *Based on the scenario featured in the Role-Playing Game [The Doorway](thedoorwaymods.insanejournal.com), where characters from all fandoms are pulled by the tesseract/cosmic cube into the Avenger's New York City.

For sixteen months, Dorian Gray had been a part of this strange, unexplainable New York City. He’d seen a summer, lasted a winter and was now caught in the sweltering heat of another languid July night. Gray was quite pleased with his stay here, even if not all of it was pleasant. Even if he’d spent far too much of it falling in love over and over again with the same man. Someone who’d made Dorian feel, over the last year and some, things that he’d never felt before. Most of the time emotions, whether good or bad, just rippled across Gray like a tired breeze over a pond, nothing struck him below the surface or changed the tide until he’d met Tony Stark. 

He didn't know if it was because Stark was the first person who’d seemed to understand what he was and thus earned Gray’s fixation like a baby chick latching to the first mother he sees, or if it was something else -- a kind of calm, clear understanding of one another, a similar sense of humour perhaps, some kind of mutual attraction that pulled at the very heart of them both which made all the pain worth experiencing. There had been plenty. Months of bitter feelings and _learning_ what it felt like to sit on a bench in a park and cry not for pity or attention but because every inch of his skin ached with confusion and wretchedness. Deep, silent desire replaced his pithiness, and love in every _second_ they spent together and every hour they were apart. Dorian had never felt like that before, and he’d never understood what it was like to want something with every vibration of his atoms only to have it not be enough. 

Now he knew, and that changed him. Not that he looked it. His petulant smile still curled the same way, his silver-blue eyes still cast the same mocking glances and he still looked as boyish and unworldly has he had the moment he’d first laid eyes on Stark. He’d looked that way for a hundred years and he would still for every single day to come. Barely a hair dared find itself out of place, the perfect unblemished boy forever. Only now with a broken heart. 

Then all the walls he’d build in recovery had crumbled with an unexpected kiss. They’d fought again, and _Dorian_ had fought himself again, three weeks past and neither one of them had slept much. The middle of the night was no different than noon aside from the silence and that was better, anyway. Because when the world was quiet, there was no reason for anyone to speak at all. 

An hour ago, they'd abandoned the bed they'd shared for those weeks. Not a particularly long time, but within the echo of everything, those three weeks hadn't felt like a beginning, but a discovery, like gold that had been buried in the sand just beneath their toes, waiting for someone to drop to their knees, abandon all hope, and _dig_. 

They sat on the floor, Stark with his elbows on his knees, an arm outstretched to the eternal youth in front of him, and Dorian kneeling in front of him, sliding his fingers across Tony's forearms, bowing his head to kiss the callouses; the hard skin of his the inventor's hands. Gray treated even stretched scar on Tony's fingers, the evidence of a burn or injury, with special care. He pressed his pink, cupid lips against each in turn. They weren't evidence of sins or indiscretions, they were not the blisters and boils of a tortured soul, they were only the remnants of _mistakes_. But mistakes never quite cut that deep into eternity. 

Behind them, leaned against the wall and covered with a bed-sheet sat a framed canvas, a single corner visible from beneath the cloth, a blackened piece of rotting wood still clinging to the remnants of gold leaf that had once gilded the entire piece of beautifully carved workmanship. Dorian had collected it only a few days before, bringing it here to this penthouse away from the tower. They wouldn’t stay together as refugees with everyone else. They had the money and the means, and Dorian half believed that the further from the tesseract they moved, the more the blue cube might forget about them. But as much as this was where Gray wanted to be, he could never be without his portrait for long. Though his feelings about the bloated and aged form beneath the veiling sheet changed as often as his moods, there was always an uneasiness when he was far from him. Like all Gray’s secrets, the closer they were to his heart the safer he felt. 

There were splinters, fractions of moments (as all moments were fractions when a man had eternity. Every year he lived feld shorter when held up against the time he’d been alive) where the change that Stark stirred up in him _was_ physical. Now, for example, as he slithered past the barrier of Tony’s knees to sit firmly in his lap, his pupils were dilated. When the other man moved, leaning forward to ease Dorian’s back into the carpet, Gray pressed the meat of his thighs against the bones of Stark’s hips hard enough to bruise them violet. 

Gray wondered and he writhed on the rug, letting Stark discard what was left of his clothing, why they’d abandoned the bed when this is what they’d come to on the floor, but he didn’t care. Mattresses, clothing, _other people_ \-- they could all be damned. He closed a hand around the side of Tony’s neck, he kissed along his jaw, grazing his fresh skin against the rough stubble on Stark’s face hard enough to sting.

Everything about Tony was just a little bit _worn_. The lines on his face, the thick skin of his palms. The edges were just touch rough, the lines jagged, broke up with scars, twisted muscles and so much damage. There was no painter here, no oil wash to smooth out the coarseness of the canvas, no satin finish to add serenity to Stark’s blue eyes. Gray pulled him closer just to feel his breath. Dorian, as he ran his fingers through Tony’s hair, met his gaze, smiled, decided that this really was what it was all about. These moments, thrown down on the rug and Dorian _wished_ , he really wished that he could take off _his_ armour just as easily as Tony did. Because that’s what they were, really, just damage behind a veneer of strength, vanity and symmetry an entire world away from what thudded against the walls of their hearts. 

Dorian guided Tony’s mouth to his shoulder, shielding him as he turned his face away, stretched a hand out and twisted his fingers into the corner of a the portrait’s vestment. His heels dug into the carpet, hips curved to catch the pressure of Stark’s movements, bit down on his lip and slipped the sheet away, uncovering the picture. His stomach tightened, the way it always did when he looked at the _thing_ in its framed. All his hopefulness, from time to time, sometimes still managed to trick him into believing that one day he would throw back the coverings and see _only_ the painting that Basil had made him one hundred and fourteen years ago. 

He thought about trying to stop Tony from raising his head and seeing what he’d done but he knew there was no use. His reaction to the portrait had alerted Stark that something wasn't right. Dorian shut his eyes, savouring the feeling of the other man’s lips as they moved softly across his collarbone; a chain of kisses. Concern rose in Gray’s throat as he waited for the pause, for Tony to lift his eyes and --

See. 

See him again for the first time. 

The pause fell like Rachmaninoff’s fingers on a piano, striking a chord on Dorian’s skin that resonated, he was sure, into the floorboards. He tried to work out what would hurt the least: a second spent to right the fallen sheet, to once again tuck away who he was; ignore the ugliness because a rosy-cheeked _Hyacinth_ was easier on the eyes. Gray knew he wouldn't mind, not really. That picture made his insides swirl, he expected no more or less from anyone else. What he certainly didn't expect at all, was the sudden hand on his side, moving along the span on his ribs until Dorian had to open his eyes just to see what Stark was doing. 

Dorian found Tony with his eyes still raised, looking at the picture. But he didn't move, he didn't slide off to replace the covering as Gray expected, but instead he only continued to run his hands across Dorian’s body until finally he gazed down at him again and ducked his head to part Gray’s lips with his own, opening him up with a distressingly deep kiss and rocking harder against his hips. 

***

The sun was coming up, the noises outside betraying the silence of the night as New York started to come alive again. They sat together, naked beneath the sheet that had covered the portrait, staring at it without a word. Heat resonated off them and Gray felt absolutely calm looking at the peeling paint and thick red stains that soiled Basil Hallward’s once-perfect vision. Dorian rose to his feet slowly, letting go of Tony’s hand which he hadn't realised he’d been holding and crossed the room, bare feet slapping the cold hardwood floors. 

He’d never really told anyone about the moment from which he’d been taken from his world to this one. When the cosmic cube had decided to surround him and and pull him screaming from one timeline to another, but it was _why_ he’d come through with his portrait. He’d had a hand on its frame and the other wrapped tightly around the very dagger with which he’d murdered his artist, the very violent tool he was about to plunge through the canvas, committing his unintended suicide.  
It meant, of course, that the picture was not the only object that had flowed through the gaps in time and the universes. He slide open the small drawer of an end table, reached in and pulled out the knife. 

He’d spent as much time examining the blade since he’d come to this city as he had looking at the painting itself. He clutched it to his chest and returned to Tony, but didn’t reclaim his spot beneath the sheet, instead he took the dagger by its blade and held the handle out towards Stark.  
And something passed between them, unspoken as so much of their understanding of one another had always been. Stark got up, holding his breath as he took the knife from Dorian’s hands. They both turned back to the picture.

Dorian moved first, stepping forward to place his hand on the worn wood as Stark kneeled down in front of the canvas. Gray bit his lip, turning his eyes towards the window, looking out at the lavender haze that streaked the skyline between the still-sleeping buildings. The colour reminded him of the lilacs in Basil’s garden and he tightened his grip on the frame as Tony placed his hand on the opposite side. 

Stark held the dagger in front of the portrait, before bending slowly and pressing the tip of the blade into the bottom corner of the frame, cutting through what remained of the gold, digging deep into the wood. 

Gray did not watch him work, but he felt -- he was sure he felt -- every cut, every slide of the knife. He waited, not daring to look or even breathe until he heard the sound of the dagger being placed on the floor. He glanced down at what Tony had done and smiled. 

The wood beneath where Tony had cut was not black or marred, but fresh, as though the other man had simply scraped off the char from something otherwise undamaged. He let go of the picture and moved to the floor, not yet daring to touch Stark, but when he felt Tony’s hand against his back, he leaned against him immediately, kissing his shoulder. 

There, written in the corner in uneven letters --

**TONY STARK.**

Permanently.


End file.
